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Scientiae 2016

Panel and paper abstracts

Panel: 

Renaissance corpora documenting ancient Roman artifacts and their interrelation:

Interdisciplinary research in the international circle of the Roman Accademia della Virtù

Organiser: Bernd Kulawik

In 1547 the Siennese humanist Claudio Tolomei published a letter written in 1542 and describing an ambitious project that a group of learned men in Rome – usually identified as the so-called Accademia della Virtù – planned to promote: Its aim was the publication of 23 books containing an extensive philological apparatus regarding Vitruvius' Ten books on architecture as well as a documentation of all material remains from Roman Antiquity that would be of any relevance for a comprehensive understanding of ancient architecture. The purpose of the whole project was not archaeology in a strict sense, but to establish a foundation for a new modern architecture that would be based on all available explicit and implicit knowledge and examples from Antiquity. 

Until recently it was generally thought that this project never came into being and that its only result was Philandrier's book with Annotationes to Vitruvius. But now it seems that some corpora of Renaissance sources originally may have been produced for or in connection with the Accademia's project: Some of these corpora (like Jean Matal's collection of inscriptions in the Vatican) are well known and were used as starting points for modern research and editing projects like the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL). Others are only now being introduced into the scientific discussion. The main reason why this interrelations were not noticed yet seems to be the exact modern disciplinary separation invented by the Accademia to share the immense workload. The panel will contain 4 papers (15 minutes each) by researchers working on these corpora to present them to a wider audience and discuss their presumed interconnection which are by now corroborated through the known personal relations between their authors: humanists like Cervini and Agustín, artists like Sangallo, Vignola and Palladio or antiquarians like Ligorio and Strada – all (temporary) members of the Accademia. 

[…]

Paper 4: The Codex Destailleur D and its group of measurements of Roman buildings

More than 3,000 anonymous measured drawings of ancient Roman buildings by French draftsmen on 600 sheets in several collections (the biggest group being the Berlin Codex Destailleur D) are characterised by their astonishing precision and the attempt to document every element, even details like heating and water supply systems. In this regard, the drawings are the most detailed and also the most comprehensive and systematic surveys of ancient Roman architecture ever made: Because many of the documented monuments have been destroyed or damaged later, the drawings are the only or (at least) the best surviving sources providing information about them. While it seems implausible that the draftsmen – some of whom could be identified with craftsmen from the Fabbrica di San Pietro – could have developed the methodology and pursued this project over years on their own, Italian and French notes indicate that the drawings had been commissioned by more educated persons. During the 1540s and 1550s, only the Accademia della Virtù can be regarded as this group. Possible relations between the drawings and the influential books by the architects Vignola and Palladio will be discussed.